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Watch a big-bang physicist learn his theory was right

By Staff, Digital First Media and wire

Posted:
03/19/2014 12:57:19 AM EDT

Andrei Linde, a physics professor at Stanford formed a theory more than 30 years ago.

In the 1980s, he and others worked on the cosmological inflation theory — the idea that the universe grew incredibly fast, in fractions of a second. He learned about it a few days before it was announced to the world from Chao-Lin Kuo, co-leader of a research team.

His reaction is precious. In the video, you see him staggering, shocked that his theory now has proof behind it.

The findings were announced on Monday, by a collaboration that included researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The team plans to submit its conclusions to a scientific journal this week, said its leader, John Kovac of Harvard.

Astronomers scanned about 2 percent of the sky for three years with a telescope at the South Pole, where the air is exceptionally dry.

They were looking for a specific pattern in light waves within the faint microwave glow left over from the Big Bang. The pattern has long been considered evidence of rapid growth, known as inflation. Kovac called it “the smoking-gun signature of inflation.”

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The researchers say the light-wave pattern was caused by gravitational waves, which are ripples in space and time. If verified, the new work would be the first detection of such waves from the birth of the universe, which have been called the first tremors of the Big Bang.

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